Earlier this month, I had the chance to speak at the New Zealand Centre for Intellectual Property, housed within the University of Auckland’s Law School. I was invited by Dr Joshua Yuvaraj, Senior Lecturer, Co-Director of the Centre, and long standing friend of CREATe.
I was there to present our recent research on the working conditions of visual artists in the UK conducted as part of the Creators’ Earnings and Contracts Hub, a wider project exploring how digital change is reshaping labour markets across the creative industries. What made the event particularly interesting was the audience: not a room full of copyright specialists, but a diverse group of scholars from both the Law and Business Schools.
That interdisciplinary setting created a space to reflect more broadly, and perhaps more honestly: what kinds of legal and policy interventions actually improve artists’ lives? And are we even asking the right questions?
The State of the Artist Economy
The findings from our latest survey of UK-based visual artists are, quite frankly, troubling. Since 2010, artists’ income has declined by 47%. In 2024, 81% of visual artists in the UK earn less than the national median wage, and 65% fall below the minimum wage threshold. Many sustain their practice through a patchwork of secondary jobs and often depend on another earner in the household to make things viable.
These figures are not just the result of individual circumstances but reflect the broader reality of the creative economy. Visual artists operate within a winner-takes-all market, where a small group at the top captures the majority of income. This dynamic isn’t unique to visual art and echoes across the creative industries, from music to book publishing and screen. Artistic outcome, in the current economy, is largely measured by income, which means that recognition, value, and visibility are tightly bound to market performance. As a result, the outcomes of creative work are structurally unequal
As we think about how to improve the working conditions of creatives, there’s an important distinction to make: equality of outcome is not the same as equality of opportunity. Calls for more redistribution and public support must be careful not to assume that equal income is inherently fair as there will always be differences in how a work is received by audiences, and that variation is part of what makes culture dynamic. The goal isn’t to flatten the market, but to build a landscape where more people can participate and sustain a career.
Still, the question remains: why has the typical income for visual artists plummeted?
Much of the recent conversation has focused on generative AI as a key source of disruption, and it has undoubtedly introduced new pressures. Yes, AI is accelerating labour displacement, but let’s be clear (and slightly colloquial): artists were already getting poorer before ChatGPT. The crisis runs deeper than new technology, and results from the accumulation of long-standing issues that have steadily eroded the economic foundations of artistic labour.
To summarise shortly, the democratisation of tools and platforms, often praised for broadening access, has led to an explosion in supply. More people are producing and distributing creative works, but the demand hasn’t kept pace, ultimately pushing the prices down. Meanwhile, other sources of income, like public commissions, grants, and private patronage, have declined significantly without being meaningfully replaced. Layer onto that the broader political and social instability of the past decade with rising costs of living, Brexit, COVID-19, and ongoing global crises, and you get what we might call a slow-burning collapse of sustainability.
This doesn’t just affect emerging artists trying to break in. It also threatens the “middle class” of creatives, those who have spent years building viable careers, who aren’t household names but form the backbone of the cultural sector. Even for them, staying in the field is becoming increasingly difficult.
So while perfect income equality may be neither realistic nor desirable, what we should be working toward is an industry where you don’t have to be at the top to survive. An industry where those outside the spotlight can still build dignified, sustainable careers.
This is precisely where policy interventions come in.
What Policy Tools Are on the Table?
1. Copyright-Based Measures
One part of the traditional policy toolbox has been copyright-based measures: artist resale rights, moral rights, levies on copying devices, and more recently, attempts to regulate AI training through copyright frameworks.
Presenting in New Zealand, which has just implemented the Artist Resale Right (ARR), offered an opportunity to reflect on how the system has played out in the UK, where it has been in force since 2006. The principle behind ARR is straightforward: when an artwork is resold on the secondary market, the artist receives a small royalty. The aim is to ensure that artists, especially those whose work grows in value after the initial sale, can benefit from that later appreciation.
But in practice, the impact has been modest. While our research doesn’t isolate ARR figures specifically, we gathered data on several secondary income sources (including ARR) and found that most artists receive only small sums from these channels. Although such payments are valued (as any income is), they are rarely transformative, and tend to benefit a small number of artists whose work circulates in high-end galleries and auction houses.
In that sense, ARR — and other copyright-based measures — carry a strong legal importance, but deliver limited economic benefit. This leads to an uncomfortable but necessary observation: visual artists operate in a copyright-intensive field, yet the economic rights they hold under that system do not translate into stable or sufficient income.
In Auckland, I then asked: if copyright can’t fix it, what can?
2. Mandatory Fair Remuneration Rights
Regulating the terms on which artists get income can be approached through contract law. Take the example of France, where legal minimum pay rates are set for film industry workers through collective agreements. While that sector is organised differently, it raises the worthwhile question whether similar protections could be extended to visual arts.
Interestingly, in the UK, organisations like Artists’ Union England have already established clear guidelines for minimum pay rates, tailored to artists’ experience levels. However, our research shows these recommendations are rarely enforced in practice, even in projects funded by public institutions, and that because of their precarious position, many artists feel unable to challenge or negotiate contract terms. But when they do negotiate, our survey (see p.48) shows that the most frequently contested items are the initial fee and royalty rate, highlighting just how central these are to artists’ livelihoods. This tells us that low fees aren’t just a byproduct of a broken system; they’re also one of the core drivers of instability in the sector.
I’m not advocating for a rigid, heavy-handed approach. Part of what draws people to the arts is its freedom, the ability to define their own trajectory. But that freedom shouldn’t come at the expense of basic protections. Artists are workers, and like other workers, they can be exploited. One step the UK could take is to implement mandatory minimum pay standards, at least for publicly commissioned or subsidised work. It’s a modest but meaningful measure, one that would signal a broader commitment to valuing artistic labour.
Of course, there are open questions. Would mandating minimum fees create unintended consequences? Might it deter hiring, or accelerate the displacement of human labour by AI? In a globalised market, is there a risk of outsourcing creative labour in regions where national pay standards are lower? For example, when preparing my presentation in Auckland, I noted that Creative New Zealand’s recommended minimum rate was £13/hour, half the UK’s recommended rate of £26/hour by AUE.
3. Redistributive and Structural Measures
Finally, there are measures that support artists not through copyright or market regulation, but through direct income support and structural investment. These approaches aim to address the economic realities of creative work more head-on.
Ireland’s Basic Income for the Arts pilot is a particularly interesting example. Launched in 2022, it provides €325 per week, unconditionally, to 2,000 randomly selected artists and creative workers for a period of three years. Early results seem positive: participants are producing more creative works, staying in the sector longer, and relying less on secondary employment.
As these kinds of ideas gain momentum, they inevitably raise a series of complex, and still unresolved questions. Who qualifies as an artist? And how do we decide which creative workers receive public support? In our own research, we’ve spent time developing criteria to define professional practice, but this remains a thorny and contested issue, one we discussed at length with colleagues in Auckland.
There’s also the broader challenge of financial sustainability. Can governments realistically afford to subsidise artists over the long term, especially when public finances are under increasing pressure? These debates are unfolding in a wider political context marked by tensions between calls to reduce taxes and growing demands for stronger social support systems.
Ireland is a case in point: the country now runs one of the most progressive income support schemes for artists in the world, yet it also has the lowest corporate tax rate in the EU, and is grappling with a severe cost of living and housing crisis (the median house price in Dublin now exceeds €350,000). These contradictions matter and raise the question of how cultural policy fits within a broader economic model, and whether schemes like this are meant as permanent support, or transitional tools to help artists build sustainable practices in a market-driven world.
There are, quite clearly, no easy answers. But perhaps that’s not the point right now. These are questions we’ll only resolve through experimentation, iteration, and inevitably a bit of trial and error. What matters is that we keep testing new models, and remain open to what works, even if it doesn’t quite fit within old categories.
Beyond income redistribution, France offers another avenue for reflection with its Artist-Author status that provides a framework for recognising artists not just as entrepreneurs or rightsholders, but as workers entitled to social protections. The system is administratively complex, split across multiple categories, and managed by two separate bodies, but despite these bureaucratic hurdles, it grants eligible artists access to core elements of the social safety net typically reserved for salaried employees including sick pay, pensions, and parental leave. It also offers a more favourable tax regime, recognising the irregular and often precarious nature of artistic income.
Furthermore, some French initiatives go beyond income and legal status to address material conditions. The City of Paris provides subsidised housing for artists, while institutions like Cité internationale des arts, largely funded by public money, offer year-long residencies in the heart of the French capital. What makes these interventions compelling is that they invest directly in the infrastructure that enables artistic work to happen in the first place. And in doing so, they offer a more grounded and pragmatic vision of cultural policy.
A Final Reflection
The recent implementation of the Artist Resale Right in New Zealand — alongside the Basic Income for the Arts and other initiatives in France — will be important to watch in the coming years. It will be interesting to see how these play out in practice, and whether they deliver meaningful, long-term support for artists. Regardless of the outcomes, they broaden the conversation and create space for a more nuanced dialogue about what works, and for whom.
A key part of that dialogue is the work we do at CREATe: collecting robust data on creators’ incomes, contracts, and working conditions, to assess whether policies are actually creating positive change.
More broadly, this trip to New Zealand reminded me that no country has it completely figured out.
